


She's Alive! Alive!

by AuteurOnirique



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Abigail and Miranda are trapped in an elevator, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, complete with everyone wearing halloween costumes, halloween fic, this is just fluff and happy things!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 20:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12565432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuteurOnirique/pseuds/AuteurOnirique
Summary: “Abigail didn’t want to hate Halloween, but today she really, really did.”Abigail meets Miranda while trapped in an elevator, wearing the most uncomfortable of Halloween costumes.





	She's Alive! Alive!

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a prompt by [hiddencait](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/pseuds/hiddencait) that I wrote and posted on tumblr in July, but since it is actually Halloween now (in NZ it is at least) I decided to post it here as well! 
> 
> It is all fluff and nice feelings! Hope you enjoy!

Abigail didn’t want to hate Halloween, but today she really, really did.

The two beer packs felt heavy and it pulls on her shoulders. Winter was coming and her… clothes were not totally temperature-appropriate. Or anything-appropriate, really.

She had agreed to go to that Halloween party with Eleanor and her friends because she usually never went to parties and… well, she had wanted to go to a party and Eleanor had told her this would be a relaxed party. Friends meeting for a few spooky cocktails and maybe a horror movie towards midnight. That sounded like fun. Something she could do.

The “only catch”, Eleanor’s words, not hers, was that costumes were compulsory. No costumes, no party. Everyone had to be ridiculous. Abigail had looked up Halloween costumes online for two minutes before declaring that she couldn’t go.

“Eleanor,” she had retorted when her friend had tried to persuade her, “I am not wearing this, I’ll look ridiculous and not in the good way. Why can’t they have like… costumes that actually cover your body. This is not I-am-not-cut-like-a-model friendly.”

“You worry too much. Just take one, you can wear tights and we’ll put some fake blood on it and you’ll be alright. My costume isn’t much better.”

“What are you going out as?”

“The website said ‘sexy ghost catcher,” Eleanor answered, “But I’ll make a few changes to make it more like ‘ghost catcher that has accidentally become a ghost herself” that should do, you know. Look at this one! You’d look great in this one!”

So Abigail went as a sexy Bride of Frankenstein. Except her skirt was so much shorter, and her bandages did nothing to make her feel more covered. She did have to give credit where credit was due and say that Eleanor did an amazing job teasing her hair into the iconic shape, complete with the white streaks.

That really didn’t make the sting of betrayal she had felt when she had walked in the flat full of costumed people and got introduced to a very very tall man dressed as Frankenstein’s monster. (He must have found his costume on the same website she had because the costume didn’t cover much)

She couldn’t believe Eleanor was still trying to find her a boyfriend after she had formally promised Abigail she’d stop. And she couldn’t believe Blood-thirsty mermaid Max who hosted the party had been into the conspiracy as well. She had told them that she had never, ever, been with anyone because she never really felt the urge, the pull of attraction that they had been talking about. And when they had fallen over her and showed her a multitude of pictures of very much not dressed people, she had told them she regretted mentioning it because it made her feel very uncomfortable. And then they had promised they wouldn’t mention it again.

And next thing she knew, she was been greeted by a very very tall man with a sheepish but cute smile who happened to be dressed as Frankenstein’s monster under the smirks of her “friends”.

She knew this was going to be a very long night.

She was sipping a porter in the couch with Anne who had an incredible pirate costume and Jack in an equally incredible Navy uniform, trying to avoid Max and Eleanor, when Silver had thrown himself in the couch next to her: “Urgh, I have to go do the beer run again, but it’s so cold out there and the elevator is so slow, and the lights are flickering sometimes and all…”

“Don’t take pity on him Abi,” Jack warned her, “He’s been trying to get a good soul to do all his work for him since he arrived.”

“What are you even supposed to be?” Anne asked him, passing him the joint all the same.

“I’m the bride of Dracula, duh,” Silver answered, chuckling, gesturing to his corset and torn dress pants. He did have two bloody puncture wounds on his neck and fake blood trailing over his pierced nipples.

At this moment, Charles Vane entered the room as a zombie pirate. It was mostly him being bare-chested with a fake plastic ribcage around him, pirate boots and tight leather pants with a… skull and crossed bones on the back.

If he saw her, he would end up telling Eleanor where she was. And Eleanor would come with the very nice Frankenstein monster and this would be all very very awkward.

“I’ll go,” she announced suddenly, “I’ll go on the beer run.”

“Really? You save my life!”

“Sure, just tell me where the store is, I’ll go.”

So here she was, two packs of beer in her hands, not sure if she really wanted to go back there, but not really wanting to go home alone in her costume, trying to open the front door of the building without her hands. The music was so loud they probably didn’t hear the buzzer she was pressing on with her elbow.

Oh this night was just great.

“Here, let me help you,” A voice came behind her.

Abigail turned to see a women, probably in her early forties, coming behind her, with her keys in hand. She was wrapped in a long navy coat, hair in a bun, and impressive dark circles under her eyes. She looked her up and down and Abigail was sure she never felt as ridiculous in her entire life.

The woman kindly opened the door for her and held it while Abigail hauled herself and the packs of beer inside.

“Cold night, isn’t it?” The woman asked.

She had the most amazing hazel eyes Abigail had ever seen. And a very kind smile. There was nothing judgmental in her voice. She wasn’t talking about Abigail’s costume, she was just casually referring to how cold the night was.

“At least the beers will just be fresh,” She answered shyly.

The woman’s smile widened. She walked to the elevator: “What floor are you going to?”

“The fourth floor.”

The woman held the elevator door for her. Abigail couldn’t help but think this was very chivalrous of her. She felt her ears and her cheeks burn. She didn’t quite know why.

She wanted to speak, to say something to fill the silence, but the elevator doors were closing. Abigail set the two beer packs on the floor. The woman pressed the fourth floor button. Abigail tried to pretend she wasn’t deeply curious about which floor the woman lived in.

She didn’t press any other button.

“So you live on the fourth floor too,” She asked, trying not to wince at the banality of her question. She must have sounded like a banal girl making boring small talk because she was just stuck here and…

“I am,” the woman only replied while tugging on her hairband to release her hair from the bun. Abigail wondered how long it was. “It would appear we are neighbours. Have you moved in recently? I don’t recall seeing you.”

“Oh, no, I… I don’t live here. I’m just here for the party. I hope we won’t bother you too much with the music. I can tell them to…”

Abigail didn’t have the opportunity to finish her sentence when the lights in the elevator started to flicker. She immediately looked up, addressing a prayer to deaf Fortuna, for normal lights.

Of course, deaf Fortuna happened to be very deaf tonight and two seconds later, the elevator started trembling, stuttering, and finally completely stopped.

Abigail gasped, struggling to recover her balance, instinctually grabbing the railing. The woman stood still, silent, tense, with her hair half-undone. Everything was silent for a moment, a beat, and it felt like the world had stopped.

The woman looked back at her, as if checking with her that this was really happening.

Suddenly, recognition passed over her face: “The Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale, 1935.”

Abigail, whose heart was suddenly beating as quickly as the elevator was not going, took a minute to understand. She frowned a little, blinked, and then found herself nodding a little, completely dumbfounded.

“The pose reminded me…” The woman said with a joyless smile. She turned back to the button panel and pressed the fouth one again. And again. “It usually works…” She muttered, more to herself than to Abigail, who was still torn between confusion and panic.

She pressed the ground floor button. Nothing happened.

With a deep sigh, the woman finally pressed the red emergency button.

“Do you have signal on your phone?” She asked Abigail, who tried not to blush while fishing her phone from the only place she have enough space to put it: in her bra.

“I only have one bar. It might be enough to call 911.”

“Good, good.” The woman sighed, closing her eyes as if this was the first good news she had heard today. “Have you ever called an emergency line before?”

Abigail shook her head no. The woman gestured for her to give her the phone.

After a short but very, very efficient conversation, the woman ended the call and announced: “ So, looks like we’re going to be trapped here for a while… They told me 15 minutes, thereabouts.”

“But what if the elevator drops? Can’t they come faster?” Abigail said, and immediately noticed how shrill her panicked voice sounded.

“The statistics for that to happen are very, very low. But if it ever goes south, there’s always the emergency trap door. Although this option is not the safest one either. The safest bet is to sit here and wait for the fire department to arrive. Will you be alright? Are you having a panic attack? Can you breathe?”

A little overwhelmed by the information, and the rapid succession of questions, Abigail had difficulty finding her words. She just shook her head yes, then no, and finally stuttered: “I’m fine. Just a little… nervous, you know.”

The woman continued to look at her intently, this time with a mischievous smile that made her eyes lit up a little: “Is this your first time?”

Now Abigail was pretty sure she was blushing badly.

“Being stuck in an elevator,” the woman finally took pity on her.

“Oh, um, yes, I never… It never happened before… You, on the other hand, look like you have experience… in being stuck in elevators.”

“Only once before. But I definitively have some experience dealing with… uncomfortable situations. I’m an ER doctor.”

“Oh,” was all Abigail could answer, trying hard not to think how… fitting that was.

After apparently waiting for something for a beat, the woman smiled again and held out her hand: “Miranda Barlow. I live next door to the party-goers.”

Miranda Barlow. What a distinguished name. Miranda Barlow. She looked very distinguished, despite the fatigue evident on her traits. With her hair still half-undone and her dark circles, she would have made the best doctor one could ask for. Sexy Frankenstein doctor costume. They would have made such a hit at that party…

“Abigail. Abigail Ashe. Nice to meet you.” She shook herself up and took Miranda’s hand, tightening her fingers a little and letting go almost immediately, terrified she would linger too long.

Miranda’s smile widened a little. Her smile just made her cheekbones look even nicer, and there was something purely bewitching about those eyes. She seemed wise, and kind, and warm, and there was something in Abigail that craved it.

“So, Abigail,” Miranda tested the name on her tongue. Abigail hoped she liked it. “Having a Halloween party?”

“Yes, I don’t usually dress like this,” Abigail joked with a little smile, and then proceeded to mentally slap herself. It sounded like she thought Miranda was stupid. Of course she didn’t like this every day.

“It’s a shame. You look cute.”

Abigail had to lower her head to hide a smile. She wished she could use her hair to hide her face. Now was not the time to feel like her heart just burst in her chest because a woman was just offering her a polite compliment in a blocked elevator.

Lowering her eyes, she saw the two packs of beer at her feet. Without thinking, she offered: “Since we’re stuck here… Would you like a beer?”

Miranda laughed. She looked at her through her eyelashes. That mischievous smile. Abigail loved it. “Just one. We need to at least be sober when we get rescued.”

Miranda then let her coat slide down her shoulders and laid it on the floor of the elevator. She then sat down on it with a groan. She pressed a hand against her atlas, massaging it with the tips of her fingers. Abigail took two bottles out of the first pack, looking for an acceptable spot on the elevator floor where she could sit in such a short skirt. Miranda smiled at her again and then inclined her head slightly to invite her on the coat next to her.

Abigail gingerly lowered herself down on the coat, extending her legs in front of her.

She could smell the acidic smell of sterile rooms, the strong perfume of coffee, and just a hint, an afternote of honey and almond, probably from her soap, or her shampoo.

She passed a beer to Miranda and mentally scolded herself for checking whether Miranda had a wedding band. She hoped Miranda hadn’t noticed but she couldn’t bring herself to turn her head fully towards Miranda to check if she had.

Abigail started sipping her beer to look busy.

She didn’t have a wedding band.

“So, how did you meet Max and Silver?” Miranda asked.

“Eleanor, my roommate, she knows them since, like, high school, I think. I’m sorry you’ll have to hear the party after a long day at work.” Abigail apologized again.

“It really isn’t a problem. I like having the music, and the noise. It helps me sleep.” Miranda’s voice became more pensive, and Abigail turned her head to look at her. Miranda was looking at the ceiling. She looked very tired. Abigail wished she could lend her her shoulder to sleep on, like Eleanor and her did sometimes.

It probably wasn’t appropriate.

Suddenly, her phone rang, making her jump badly, and spilling some beer on her thigh. She scrambled to get it, and unlock it. A remote corner of her mind realized that Miranda had probably seen her phone background, which was a picture of John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Vernon Lee with the caption “I can take your breath away like your favourite painting” which was a joke she had made on Snapchat and that Eleanor has stuck as her background (and lock screen) to punish her for being “the worst nerd she had ever met”. Abigail had never changed because she didn’t know what to replace it with… and also, honestly, it was still pretty funny…

“Yes, Eleanor?” She answered her phone.

“Oh thank fucking god, you’re alive! Are you alright? Where the fuck are you? Have you gone home?”

“No, I actually went on the beer run, like an honest person, and I’m not stuck in the elevator. With the beer.”

“Stuck in the elevator? How?” Eleanor’s words were slightly slurred and it was difficult to hear her over the noise.

“Stuck as in, the elevator stopped, the doors won’t open, and we have to wait until the fire department arrives to unstuck us.”

“When the fuck… Wait… WAIT! Us?! Who are you with? Billy was right fucking here not two seconds ago! Was it two seconds?”

Abigail heard Miranda chuckle next to her. Oh no, no, no, she couldn’t have Miranda think she had a boyfriend!

“I’m not with Billy, I’m with Miranda Barlow. The neighbour.”

As if Miranda had just been conjured back to the realm of reality, she manifested herself by dabbing a little at Abigail’s thigh with a tissue, to wipe away the beer she had spilled. Abigail tried not to gasp in the phone.

“Oh, okay…” Eleanor answered, like she was thinking about something but was not sure enough to actually talk about it. Which was very rare.

“I don’t want my phone to run out of battery, so I’ll just hang up, okay?”

“It’s a shame Billy is here tonight because he could have been working and you could have met like this, and it would have been fucking romantic,” Eleanor started rambling on only to be drowned by people cheering a new song.

“I’ll call you back,” Abigail said and ended the call. “Sorry about that, it’s… Eleanor…”

Miranda smiled at her, like they were sharing some kind of secret by sitting here in a blocked elevator, sipping beer. Abigail did her best not to look at her lips, but felt like she couldn’t look into her eyes without being entirely unveiled.

She wanted to kiss Miranda. Very much so. She wanted to just lean in and press her lips to Miranda’s. She wanted Miranda’s hand to stay on her knee. Wherever she wanted to put her hands, really. Miranda just… made her want to lean in.

Miranda just drank some of her beer: “So, is Billy your boyfriend?”

“Oh, no, he’s really not. I barely met him. But my friends want to set me up with him.”

“Don’t you want to be set up with him?”

“I… Um… It just… feels kind of awkward, I guess. Like… Forced.”

“Contrary to being stuck in the elevator with someone,” Miranda answered without missing a beat.

Abigail almost choked on her beer. Was Miranda suggesting they were… having a first date?

“What about you?” Abigail asked, “do you have a boyfri… husband?”

Miranda smiled like she knew something Abigail didn’t. She probably did. Many things. “I don’t. Neither boyfriend nor husband.”

Abigail had to bite her tongue not to answer “Good”.

They spent the next minutes drinking their beer and idly talking about their favourite movies, movies they wanted to watch at the cinema, how they used to celebrate Halloween when they were younger… Abigail felt that Miranda was just making her talk to forget that they were stuck so she wouldn’t panic, but she was doing a very good job at looking very interested. She even remembered the details of what she was telling her. Abigail felt like she needed to stop uncovering her entire life to this near=stranger, but then Miranda would share something very nice and interesting about the many places she had travelled to, and it all felt so genuine.

There was something in Miranda that Abigail felt drawn by. The way she spoke, how deep her voice was, how you could hear the smile in her words, how effortlessly funny she was. There was definitively something… rawer about it as well. A very simple desire to touch her and be touched by her. It was surprising how physical that desire was.

When the team from the fire department finally spoke to them through the emergency line in the elevator, they both jumped a little. Miranda laughed a little and leaned her forehead against Abigail’s temple, making her gasp softly.

All in all, they were out half an hour after having stepped in the elevator, but Abigail could barely remember anything that did not include Miranda this evening.

She did feel a little ridiculous when she stepped out of the elevator dressed like a sexy Bride of Frankenstein, but that was nothing next to Silver drunkenly suggesting things had happened in the elevator before the fire department had arrived, when Miranda stepped out with her hair undone and her coat on her arm.

Suggestion to which Miranda had replied with a good-humoured: “You’re just jealous because James hasn’t come to your party.”

Which was belied by a man dressed in an impressively well-made 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula costume stepping through the crowd to drunkenly greet Miranda.

The next day, Abigail woke up with a slight hangover in a bed she didn’t remember as hers. Her heart beating in her chest, she walked to the other room, only to find Miranda sleeping on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. Abigail smiled and went to the kitchen to start making some breakfast.


End file.
